Case · ShopaShopa: a Flemish marketplace, from logo to platform

Flemish marketplace, from logo to serverless platform on AWS

Client: Shopa
Year: 2019
Website: shopa.be ↗

01About the project

Shopa is a Flemish online marketplace where local retailers sell their products, built for our business partner Publi-Touch.

Development started in 2017 and was led from start to finish by Jamie, the founder of Sitects: from the logo, visual identity and printed materials, through marketing (SEO, advertising, social media and blog), to the full technical development.

02The question

To build a marketplace that can stand alongside the international platforms as a Flemish alternative. That called for a platform that can handle large volumes of products, automatically imports sellers' online shops and keeps running independently as it grows.

03What we built

Shopa consists of three parts:

The marketplace, where customers search and buy.
My Shopa, where sellers manage their shop.
The admin area, for the team behind Shopa.

Sellers connect their existing online shop through Shopify, WooCommerce or a CSV or XML file, and their products also appear in Google Shopping.

Technically, Shopa runs serverless on AWS (ECS Fargate), split into microservices, with Elasticsearch for searching large datasets, RabbitMQ for message processing and Redis for caching. Everything runs in Docker and is deployed through GitLab CI/CD and Terraform, so that test and production are identical.

04The result

Shopa went live as a scalable marketplace with a clear regional focus and received media attention as a “Flemish alternative”. Local retailers reach customers from their own region there, and the platform grows with them without anyone having to manage servers.

“Sitects built and launched our marketplace from start to finish, and we’re thrilled with the results. They also offered valuable consultancy that helped us improve our business processes and structure. Their expertise and support have been essential to the success of our platform.”

Peter Vandenbalck · CEO, Founder, Shopa